Lenten Reflection: Healing

The church is place where one seeks healing. The purpose of the Church is to heal us, to overcome the divide between God and humanity which is caused by sin leading to our very death. Healing is achieved when we are united to one another and to God in the Body of Christ, which is the Church.

How is this healing achieved? When we come to know Christ, when we become one with Him and with one another then the healing process takes shape within all of us. Everything the Church does, through it's liturgical and sacramental life, is directed at restoring our relationships between God and creation. Our restoration is made possible through our interaction with creation which unites all of creation including all of humanity. The real meaning of Christian healing involves the whole person. The healing is made possible through the salvific events of the church, the Eucharist, Baptism which initiated us into the body of Christ.

As members of the body of Christ we enter this "membership" through Baptism which takes of the old "man" and puts on the new "man". The Eucharist is the means by which this membership is realized and continues to be lived out. In fact, everything the Church sets out for us, prayers, sacraments, feasts, have the Eucharist as their goal. We are the Church when we gather together, to celebrate the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection on behalf of all. Not only do we remember these events of the past, but we become partakers of Christ in the present, sharing in His divine nature for the restoration (healing) of soul and body. It is in the Eucharist that the famous line spoke by St. Athanasius is realized: "God became man, so that man might become god". This is what it means to be united to God and become divinized in His body; the Church.

Humanity and all of creation is created to be in union with God and the Eucharist is the realization of this union. True healing is precisely the restoration of union with God, the restoration of the proper relationship between God and creation. Every time we partake of the Eucharist we receive this grace of healing. This healing not only affects humanity but enters all of creation through our restoration with the one in whom salvation was realized through his body; the body which we all called to unite with.    

Being the Wounded Healer

Within the last 5 months I've had many people ask me, "Bavly what exactly do you do at a Hospital and what is a Chaplain"? It is a loaded question and I don't think there is a direct answer. Depending on who asks I give an answer based on the person standing in front of me. But for everyone who does ask I always say, "I am a wounded healer providing spiritual care to those who are also wounded".

In my "profession" we must recognize that we are broken humans seeking to help others on their journey of healing which begins in suffering. Each person is different and each patient has a story. My starting point is diving into that story to see how the experiences of that person have shaped there understandings and realities around them. It's not easy talking to people and it's not easy when we have to deal with heavy things that come our way. Chaplains deal with a lot of human suffering and we must accept our suffering and the suffering of other humans as the starting point to wholeness and healing. In his classic work, "The Wounded Healer", Fr. Henri Nouwen says that we must make the individual realize that they are first and foremost a human being who is loved:

The Christian leader, minister or priest, is not one who reveals God to the people-who gives something to those who have nothing-but one who helps those who are searching to discover reality as the source of their existence. In this sense we can say that the Christian leader leads humans to confession, in the classic sense of the word: to the basic affirmation that humans are human and God is God, and that without God, humans cannot be called human. The Wounded Healer, Page 43.  

In finding our humanity in others we begin to see God in all. When an atheist asks me how do I understand death, or when a patient asks if dying because I am in pain is a sin, or when a patient is refusing medical care because they are DNR, I do not look just at the surface "issue", but I dig deeper and ask why are you afraid of death? Why do you think it's a sin? And why did you choose to have a DNR? Being a Chaplain can take on many roles and we have to embrace that as we offer spiritual care. Sometimes we do not have to talk at all, other times we are a 3rd party providing help to the extended family and sometimes we are the only ones at the bedside of a patient because they have no family and no one to be with them. What matters the most, and this is echoing the thoughts of Fr. Henri Nouwen, no matter what happens there is someone out there who loves you not because of who you are and what you accomplished but because you are a human being created in the image and likeness of your creator! 

"So what do I do at the hospital"? I still do not know how to answer such a question. However, my starting point rests in seeing the human being who is love and wants to be loved. If the message of the gospel is not about love we have forgotten how to be a human being. We have forgotten how to see our brothers and sisters as human beings. If the person in front of us becomes nothing more than a "person I must physically cure of his or her sickness" then our system has collapsed and we have forgotten how to look at each other as a human being. Being in that room and in the presence of the human is what I do at the hospital! Being a wounded human being approaching the bedside is my starting point. Shaping my beliefs on seeing the human being first is what I am slowly starting to understand being a chaplain in the hospital.    

  

The Minister and Inner Events: Discovering our Humanity

Henri Nouwen was a Roman Catholic priest and probably one of the greatest spiritual writers of the 20th century. In this hope-filled and profoundly simple book, Henri Nouwen offers a radically fresh interpretation of how we can best serve others. Here he inspires devoted men and women who want to be of service in their church or community, but who have found some traditional practices of outreach alienating an ineffective. Weaving keen cultural analysis  with his psychological and religious insights, Nouwen has come up with a balanced and creative theology of service that begins with the realization of fundamental woundedness in human nature.

According to Nouwen, ministers are called to identify the suffering in their own hearts and make that recognition the starting point of their service. For Nouwen, ministers must be willing to go beyond their professional, somewhat aloof, roles and leave themselves open as fellow human beings with the same wounds and suffering as those whom they serve. In other words, we heal from our wounds. Nouwen describes wounded healers as individuals who "must look after their won wounds but at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others". The minister is the one who wants to serve others however, the minister is a wounded person.

I hope to present a few passages from the book in the next few entries that will help anyone who serves guide them on their journey.    

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This might sound highly theoretical, but the concrete consequences are obvious. In practically all priestly functions, such as pastoral conversation, preaching, teaching, and liturgy, the minister tries to help people to recognize the work of god in themselves. The Christian leader, minister or priest, is not one who reveals God to the people-who gives something to those who have nothing-but one who helps those who are searching to discover reality as the source of their existence. In this sense we can say that the Christian leader leads humans to confession, in the classic sense of the word: to the basic affirmation that humans are human and God is God, and that without God, humans cannot be called human.

In this context, pastoral conversation is not merely a skillful use of conversational techniques to manipulate people into the Kingdom of God, but a deep human encounter in which people are willing to put their own faith and doubt, their own hope and despair, their own light and darkness at the disposal of others who want to find a way through their confusion and touch the solid core of life.

In this context, preaching means more than handing over a tradition; it is, rather, the careful and sensitive articulation of what is happening in the community so that those who listen can say: "You say what I only suspected, you clearly express what I vaguely felt, you bring to the fore what I fearfully kept in the back of my mind. Yes, yes-you say who we are, you recognize our condition."

When someone who listens is able to say this, then the ground is broken for others to receive the Word of God. And no minister need doubt that the Word will be received! The young especially do not have to run away from their fears and hopes but can see themselves in the face of the one who leads them; the minister will make them understand the words of salvation which in the past often sounded to them like words from a strange and unfamiliar world.

Teaching in this context does not mean telling the old story over and over again, but the offering of channels through which people can discover themselves, clarify their own experiences, and find the niches in which the Word of God can take firm hold. And finally, in this context liturgy is much more than ritual. It can become a true celebration when the liturgical leader is able to name the space where joy and sorrow touch each other as the place in which it is possible to celebrate both life and death.

So the first and most basic task of contemporary Christian leaders is to lead people out of the land of confusion into the land of hope. Therefore, they must first have the courage to be explorers of the new territory within themselves and to articulate their discoveries as a service to the inward generations.


Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry for a Rootless Generations, 43-44.